More doctors and nurses are needed to service the great numbers of people seeking death by assisted suicide in the Australian state of Queensland.

“I’ve accepted a huge number of [first] requests and we are managing but we just simply don’t have enough practitioners for a sustainable service,” says practitioner Claus Bader.

When voluntary assisted dying (VAD) became legal in Queensland this year, he says they weren’t expecting the “tsunami” of cases which followed.

“[It’s] almost like a continuous wave of choice and determination for people wanting to access the service,” Dr Bader said.

He also wants more money to compensate doctors and to allow for an e-service, in place of face-to-face meetings.

The Commonwealth Criminal Code limits the use of phone, email, fax and video communication to discuss “suicide-related material”. Prescriptions can’t be sent electronically and some assessments can’t be completed remotely.

Dr Bader said for patients in the final stages of the process, those discussions could take two minutes.

“We’re always forced to kind of skirt around the edges of the Criminal Code, while trying to stay just within its boundaries,” Dr Bader said.

The two traditional religious ceremonies marking the occasion — both a Church of Ireland service and a Catholic Mass — are “valuable and often beautiful” events, the Chief Justice said.

However, there has “always been, in my experience, some discomfort with the idea of the opening of the legal year being marked by not one but two religious ceremonies, and also increasingly with the idea that the opening of the year was associated, almost by default, with religion”, he continued.

Senior judges and lawyers from across these islands were in attendance for the historic event, which was devised by a committee chaired by Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne of the Supreme Court.

A devout Catholic woman who was on her knees praying when approached by police, and a man in a wheelchair who was praying the rosary with her, are the first people in Northern Ireland to be arrested in new abortion buffer zones.

The arrests were made by the PSNI at Causeway Hospital in Coleraine on Tuesday, according to a report in the Belfast Newsletter.

A friend of the pair, who often protests with them at the location, said he had spoken to ‘Mary’ [not her real name] after her arrest. He said pro-life protestors had been gathering at the location since abortion restrictions were relaxed in Northern Ireland in 2020.

“We are not part of an organisation, we are just individuals who gather there on Wednesdays because we understand that is the day that abortifacient pills are handed out to pregnant women there,” he said.

“Mary is a Roman Catholic and you can see in the photo she is kneeling as she often does in prayer – holding her rosary beads in one hand and a sign in the other.

“We stand there to reach out to mothers who are on the brink, praying that cars will do a U-turn – and we have seen that happen.”

TDs and Senators have been warned of “grotesque examples of unnecessary deaths” resulting from legalised euthanasia.

Chief Executive of UK Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Professor Kevin Yuill told the ‘Assisted Dying’ committee that in Canada “many” seek euthanasia “for problems of homelessness, poverty, and inadequate medical resources”, leading to “a growing number of grotesque examples of unnecessary deaths”.

Dr Thomas Finegan, Assistant Professor at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Mary Immaculate College said keeping the current law is the only “credible safeguard on offer against the normalisation of consensual killing in healthcare”. Dr Finegan is also on the board of The Iona Institute.

Dr Mark Komrad, a clinical psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University of Maryland, described the practice as “neither good medical ethics, nor good public policy”, and said he hoped Ireland could learn from America’s “bad example”.

“PAS (physician assisted suicide) in the US is anathema to most physicians. The fact is, even among those doctors who endorse these procedures, very few are actually willing to provide them,” he said.

“Lethal prescribing tends to be done by a very few extremely zealous physicians who write scores of lethal scripts, for patients with whom they’ve had a relationship for only one or two days. Last year, one doctor in Oregon wrote 51 scripts.”

Chlamydia cases this year are up 43 per cent on the same period last year, while gonorrhoea cases have almost doubled (up 95 per cent), according to the latest figures published by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC).

Young people aged 15 to 24, and gay and bisexual men, are most affected. The biggest increase in notifications was in women aged 20 to 24.

Over half of chlamydia cases and almost 40 per cent of gonorrhoea cases are in those aged 15 to 24. Similar trends are being observed in Northern Ireland.

“Young women are biologically more vulnerable in terms of catching bacterial STIs,” according to Prof Ina Park of University of California San Francisco’s school of medicine. “The cervix has a greater quantity of certain cell types that are targets for gonorrhoea/chlamydia in particular”.

“Men who have sex with men are also more likely to acquire STIs, due to higher rates of infections in their sexual networks and higher numbers of partners than men who only have sex with women.”

The PSNI has said it will not arrest pro-life clerics giving sermons against abortion whose churches happen to lie within abortion exclusion zones.

The zones of 100-250m, which includes a prohibition against silent prayer, are now in place across Northern Ireland. Criminal sanctions apply to any breach of the law.

One zone in Belfast covers two churches, a planned mosque and an Orange hall.

However, the PSNI has now said preaching or praying against abortion within such a church will not be criminalised.

Police advised the Belfast News Letter: “Safe Access Zones only apply to the strictly designated public space areas. Places of worship within a Safe Access Zone are not public areas.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health the zones apply to the public areas, not to private premises including churches.

However, she said, “anyone living, working in or visiting private properties within the Safe Access Zone will be required to abide by the zone requirements when in the designated public spaces.”

In response, the group Abolish Abortion NI noted how this could impede church-goers.

“It appears that this totalitarian imposition interferes with the free expression and religious activities that are conducted outside of their premises,” the spokesman said. “This is a clear violation of freedom of expression.”

Parents of pupils at Catholic primary schools, as well as potential incoming parents, are to be surveyed to assess the level of support for changing to a multi-denominational ethos.

A recent pilot initiative aimed at delivering multi-denominational schooling options in eight areas resulted in a distinct lack of local support and only two schools transferred from Catholic patronage.

Nonetheless, the Department of Education secretary general Bernie McNally told the annual conference of Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI) that the Department is looking at running an online parental survey of Catholic primary schools regarding reconfiguration.

“This would be for parents of children in the school and also potential incoming parents,” she said.

“As part of this process, it is our intention to keep school staff informed as the process progresses. We are currently examining the best ways of providing specific information directly to all staff.”

She added that the Department was conscious of the need to give concise information to parents, school staff and the wider community.

The Department of Foreign Affairs gave €300,000 of taxpayers’ money to the world’s largest abortion lobby group last year under the aegis of ‘international development aid’.

The information was contained in a reply to a parliamentary question of Fine Gael TD, Alan Dillon, who asked for the breakdown of overseas development assistance given by the State. International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) is listed as having received €300,000.

The move has been denounced by the Pro-Life Campaign.

“Planned Parenthood is a fervently pro-abortion NGO based in the United States which has aggressively pushed for extreme abortion policies globally. The minister for foreign affairs and Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, also spoke in the Dáil on 28 September about how the Irish government works with the Clinton Foundation towards furthering ‘women’s reproductive rights’, which is a mealy-mouth way of talking about abortion”, a spokesperson said.

“Serious questions need to be raised about the reckless spending of the Irish state on well-heeled NGOs which promote extreme pro-abortion policies. This has been particularly evident in African nations, where the US and other Western Powers have adopted a policy of offering ‘foreign aid’ in exchange for a liberalisation of these respective countries’ abortion policies”.

She added: “A strong opponent to this neo-colonial interference has been Obianuju Ekeocha of Culture of Life Africa, who will be speaking at the PLC’s National Conference in October”.

Christians in the Holy land must be free to worship without the threat of violence or provocation, the Tánaiste has said.

Mícheal Martin told The Irish Catholic he is “concerned by the increasing acts of violence against Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem”.

He added that the “imposition of restrictions on non-Jewish religious ceremonies” is also concerning.

“Ireland – and indeed the EU and the UN Security Council – has been consistently clear in insisting that the status quo of the holy sites must be respected.

“Furthermore, peaceful worshippers must be allowed to exercise their right to freedom of religion and worship freely and without threats, violence or provocation,” he said in his statement.

Green Party Minister Catherine Martin has welcomed plans by the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) to reconsider the use of the National Stadium by Christian groups opposed to aspects of the new Social Personal and Health (SPHE) curriculum, including gender ideology. The move is being seen by many Christians as an attempt to crack down on opposition to the State programme.

The probe follows an “SPHE information evening” held at the stadium. It was organised by Christian Voice Ireland, a coalition of Evangelical Christian groups and churches. A similar event was held at the stadium in July, but this time activists contacted the IABA to protest against the event.

The use of the stadium for the event was questioned by far-left TD Mick Barry, who asked whether the IABA are “not concerned that their own Diversity and Inclusion Policy, which includes LGBTQ people, is being breached by hiring the hall out to this particular church?”

In a statement to The Journal, a spokesperson for the IABA said the event did not reflect its views and confirmed that it would investigate the use of the stadium.

Minister Martin – whose department holds the sports brief – welcomed the association’s review of how the stadium was used.

“They weren’t aware of the exact use of it and I’m glad that they have said that they’d keep a much closer eye on their leasing arrangements,” she said in response to questions from The Journal.

“I think that is welcome.”